Jan Jan is a classic Eurovision tune. A small country seeks to show both its tradition and vital modern face to the world. So it commissions an electro-pop tune, adds blokes dressed in day-glo playing the duduk, and stages a massive dance number under a motorway flyover. Sorted.

Jan Jan is actually not a bad tune, with distinctive Anastacia-ish vocals being the highlight (alongside a fat bloke formation dancing in the video). Like many Eurovision competitors, Inga and Anush are professionally trained; on this occasion their alma mater being the jazz-vocal department of the Komitas State Conservatory in Yerevan. Yes, jazz-vocal has its own department.

BelarusPetr Elfimov – Eyes That Never Lie

Belarus is sometimes described as the last dictatorship in Europe. Restricted liberties might help to explain why their Eurovision entry this year sounds like it's been faxed straight from the year 1982.

Petr Elfimov is a star product of the KVN (Merry and Inventive People Club), and holds their title of Absolute Champion. He also has the face of a nine-year-old boy, and a white catsuit slit to the navel. The track is classic perm-rock: the odd squeal of guitar, the odd mention of hell, the odd piece of terrible scansion ("I was turned into stone, I was so alone, when you cameintomylife"). It's all done with a big smile that you suspect Petr wears 23 hours of every day (the other hour being the one where he sleeps).

Czech RepublicGipsy.cz – Aven Romale

The Czech Republic's entry this year is performed by a band whose name is a URL, and are led by a man in a superman suit who raps about the life of the gypsy. And it's as good as it sounds.

Only Eurovision could offer up such a song: a plea for ethnic tolerance, cunningly disguised as an Abba track with the offcuts from a pantomime. "It's true that gypsies they are everywhere," sings Radoslav "gypsy" Banga, acknowledging the tropes of far-right politicians across central Europe, "And it's no problem to me – I don't care." Fair enough. Before you know it, he's on to his next boast: "I can really make you sing like gypsy." Hurrah.

DenmarkBrinck – Believe Again

On first listen to this emotional yet jaunty song, you might be inclined to think: "Strike me down with several copies of Boyzone's Greatest Hits if that doesn't sound like a Ronan Keating number." And if you did think that, then you'd be right, because it is (partly at least).

Keating wrote the song for his lookalike Brinck who, like many of this year's contenders, is highly successful in his homeland (his last album hit number one on Danish iTunes). Brinck has a voice like Keating too, albeit crossed with James Blunt, and he remembers fondly the moments when the uninitiated would listen to his music and say, "That's a cool tune, but who's doing those power vocals?!" In other news, the video features Brinck contemplating the happy days of his past while sitting in fields of rape seed.

FinlandWaldo's People – Lose Control

The video begins with what might be a musical first: a slow pan across the prone body of a homeless person. What follows is a Eurodance track of stomping proportions whose theme – the chorus goes "I don't wanna lose control but I'm falling" – is either the precariousness of life in the 21st century, or being really hammered.

After Waldo's People won the Finnish heat, the video got 500,000 hits on YouTube, and the song will surely go off on dancefloors across (the slightly less cool parts of) the continent this summer. Waldo (yes, he's real and he has people) says: "It is cool to show the world that also other kind of music besides rock and metal is made in Finland." Oh Lordi!

FYR MacedoniaNext Time – Neshto Shto Ke Ostane

With hair bigger and trousers tighter than a monstrous poodle with a passion for couture, Next Time are bringing back cock rock, and they don't care who knows it.

In trying to Bon Jovi things up a bit, these twin brothers – Martin and Stefan Filipovski – might actually have cottoned on to something; it's a look and sound ripe for rehabilitation. The video, in which the band catch the eye of a hot video director, is typical of the genre – trumped in its 80s-ness only by this piece of PR spiel: "Next Time are constantly playing concerts across Macedonia and taking part in different humanitarian projects."

LatviaIntars Busulis – Probka

Watch this while you can, because there's a fair chance that this rather incoherent and singularly tuneless affair won't make it to Saturday's final. It's a poetic tale of a man caught in a line of "four-wheeled steel boxes" – a traffic jam – who spots a woman leaping over the car roofs, and falls in love. At least I think that's what it is. It's difficult to follow. As is the grunge-ish number itself. All in all, without even comedy rapping to redeem it, this is the worst song in the entire competition, with a video that (naturally) ends on a shot of Leonardo's Vetruvian man.

MoldovaNelly Ciobanu – Hora Din Moldova

If you feel slightly disconcerted at having got this far without encountering at least a modicum of traditional folk music, let the confusion end with this piece: a song about an indigenous dance, which seems to involve people holding hands in a circle and moving from side to side.

Allow Nelly Ciobanu to explain: "All the mountains, all the seas, are dancing chora / It's a dance you've never seen, from a country called Moldova."

It's easy to imagine this song with a drum'n'bass remix, but for now, Nelly must console herself with more modest achievements; she's getting ready to go on tour to Korea and China.

NetherlandsThe Toppers – Shine

Resembling a boy band crossed with the cast of Last of the Summer Wine, the Toppers are apparently huge in Holland. More than 850,000 people have seen the band perform live since they formed in 2004, and their shows at the Amsterdam Arena are sellouts.

Of the punters who pay to watch this band, one can only assume they are high on life, and other substances. Men about to turn 50 should know better than to sing about how "Love will make us glow in the dark". If it makes it to the final (and the Dutch haven't qualified since 2004), thousands will be left psychologically scarred. And the song's dirty wobbling bassline will do something similar to their bowels.

RomaniaElena – The Balkan Girls

You may have thought that it was Guildford girls who like to party, like nobody, like nobody, but Elena is here to set you straight. The song begins with the line: "It's time for me to unwind, I'm going to start the weekend with gin tonic and lime," and what follows is an uptempo piece of Shakira-ish pop, that is a thinly-veiled hymn to getting your drunk on.

The lyrics are cool – "My hips are ready to glow", "The groovy light will shine all night", etc – and there's a natty stab of Balkan horns at the end of each chorus (even the Spanish have thrown some Eastern influences into their song this year, in the hope of impressing the regional bloc vote). In other news, Elena comes from a family of priests and has her own dance school.

RussiaAnastasia Prikhodko – Mamo

This is the entry from the defending champions, and one can only assume that they're so scared of winning again and being accused of a stitch-up, they've decided to throw the whole thing. This dirge of a ballad is performed by a woman whose facial expression befits someone burying their pet dog. What's more, it's sung in a low growling voice that seems intent on channelling the deceased Fido's spirit. By the end of the song she is quite literally barking.

Interestingly, Anastasia is not only named after the missing Princess (though we can probably assume she's not still on the run 91 years later) but is Ukrainian too. There's some political undercurrent there all right, but goodness knows what.

UkraineSvetlana Loboda – Be my Valentine! (Anti-Crisis Girl)

If Russia is going to lose, who's going to win? The smart money is heading to Norway's Belorussian fiddler, but the less smart money (ie mine) would be heading towards Russia's partner in gas-pipe squabbling, the Ukraine.

Be My Valentine! is a fantastic pop tune, a Britney-esque romp with the obligatory Balkan element transformed into a bassline that Timbaland would be proud of. Elsewhere, there's needless repetition of the phrase "crazy ball" and a video that consists entirely of nubile young men and women being covered in melted chocolate. If that wasn't enough, Svetlana has her own clothing label that expresses "social protest against false glamorous trends and sticky stereotypes." What more do you want? A fiddle? Oh.

United KingdomJade Ewen – It's My Time

Many countries send their best selling artists. Others, their most iconic performers. Here in the UK, we send the winner of a TV talent show that isn't even very popular. OK, so it's composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and, during the live show, he may back Jade on piano as he does on the video, but ALW's not a popstar, he's a composer/impresario for goodness' sake. What's more, this song could have been lifted straight from the second act of one of his musicals. It's contemplative rather than stirring, and the fact Jade sounds a bit like Mariah Carey will cover up nothing.

The Eurovision semi-finals take place tonight and tomorrow night. The final takes place this Saturday, May 16 and will be screened live on BBC1 from 8pm